I feel kind of bad for laughing at this story, but it is a pretty hilarious example of what happens when creative “viral” marketing goes wrong. A woman in Los Angeles is suing Toyota for a campaign executed by Saatchi & Saatchi, in which people were nominated to be pranked by their friends.

Amber Duick claims she had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work during March and April of last year after she received e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew her and where she lived, and was coming to her home to hide from the police.

I’m not really sure what this campaign even has to do with the Toyota Matrix, which it was supposedly promoting, but it scared the poor girl so much, “she even made her longtime boyfriend sleep with a club and mace next to the bed for protection.” (It kind of makes me wonder how she would have reacted if she had received one of the Frenzied Waters packages promoting Shark Week, complete with her own obituary.) What do you think, is Amber a dingbat who can’t take a joke and wants to make some extra cash, or did the marketing folk go too far?

—Alyssa